Taran Kearney
Taran Kearney was a Nalthandian scout sworn to Duke Redmund who betrayed his lord, his fellow adventurers, his kingdom, his race, and his world to become a pawn of the Harbingers. He is a major antagonist of Darkness Rising. Taran was killed in the Battle of the Morning on the Great Day when Trallten's Hounds defeated the Harbingers (1st Low-Spring, 2,062 H.R.). Lore Penned by the hand of Duke Redmund, Lord of the Eastern Marches. Of all the treasons that have been done to fair Nalthand in the two millennia since its founding, those of my vassal Taran Kearney are, I believe, the most grievous. I wish now to make the record of his evil clear, so that it is understood across the kingdom and so that it may be preserved in the chronicles; to that end I have had this missive copied across the land and entered into the archives at both Norton and Calthingden. In remembering the folly that was done, may we chart a better way; in recording the evils that were committed, may we all commit ourselves anew to righteousness. The memory of all Taran's victims -direct and indirect- deserves no less. "WANTED, BY THE ORDER OF THE KING: A lanky man, with shaggy black hair and coarse stubble. He has a harsh face, hard-used, and wears upon it his aloofness, his mistrust, and his cynicism. Clad in the dark brown garb of a scout, and used to sticking to the shadows, he grips a blade that glows dull-red with a fearsome enchantment. Avoid him like the Pit itself." - Proclamation of the Templar Knights Taran Kearney was born in my Dukedom of the Eastern Marches, in the city of Rachdenburg, a subject of both myself and Lord Latrain. He grew to manhood, it is now known, in the alleys and tavern-yards of Denleary Downs, the poorest section of the city. It would seem that he was abandoned not long after his infancy, and thus was homeless and alone from his earliest memories. The skills that he developed there were all that stood between himself and starvation, so develop them he did: concealment and surprise, theft and scheming, nimbleness of hands, the opening of locks and the dismantling of mechanisms, watchfulness born from fear, ropecraft, the hum of street rumor, balancing, climbing, squeezing, twisting, rolling. No doubt the other scoundrels of the Downs made the richest marks, and he had to be ever the quicker and cleverer in order to survive. The times when he failed, and was left to the mercy of these other men, would have left an indelible impression. I know them well: I have been hanging such men all my life. I am sure there were times when Taran was forced to do the unspeakable. But he had one goal, above all, and at this he was successful: he survived. Yet Nalthand is no orc-warren, and even in its darkest corners the light of order shines through. The men-at-arms of House Yaxley keep order of a kind even in the Downs, and the day came when, as the stocks had been well-worn by his neck, Taran finally faced the noose. It was then that Constable Alcuin, Latrain's right hand, noted the criminal's skills and opted for mercy. If Taran would serve as scout in his duke's army, for ten years and one day, then his crimes might be wiped away in kind. If he failed and fell back into his old ways, then the second time there would be no mercy. And serve he did. By the time of the Second Battle of Gnathburg, Taran was the finest of my scouts, which is why I chose him to lead you into the forest in pursuit of the Cultists of Baalzebul. How he appeared to you that day, he appeared ever to me: friendless, sullen, cold. I have heard of the tension between you, even then, arising from his dedication to self-preservation above all else. But like you, I had no idea how deep went the rot, that long ago he had concluded that goodness was hollow and the world was a lie, or I would have strung him up and made him dance the hempen jig myself. It is to all of our sorrows that I did not. Yet he was lost, utterly and completely, even then. Always underneath was his savage view of things, and the streaks of cruelty that could not long remain hidden. I know that he feuded with nearly all of your allies -with Pallen, with Elethea, with Cade, with Enlin- and that he would have murdered the pickpocket Ballard in Stalgher if you had not stopped him. I know that he slaughtered goblin women and children to prevent the alarm from being raised on your journey back through the Bardenlands. Darkness always tells. For all throughout your acquaintance, from the very moment that you met him, Taran was already a traitor. How had Maynard come to rule him? I cannot say, but the wretched imp Texerrizyl seemed to serve as Maynard's agent in this; the creature was likewise enabler when Maynard spoke with Harkness in a dream. It would seem that Maynard was ever guided to weak links, to broken, wretched men that he could easily lead into betrayal and madness: Taran and the Motworths in Nalthand, the Blackden dynasty of Atheria, Eusebio in Elrador. No doubt a mixture of threats and promises and half-truths about the future were enough to turn him in his weakness. You have met Maynard, and can testify as to how at first and with little knowledge he may seem overwhelming, even omnipotent. But the divination is clear: it was not the magics of compulsion, and the betrayal was committed willingly. Thus it seems, in the end, that it was committed by Taran in an attempt to survive. And the nature of this betrayal? Seen now, with the clarity of the historian, it is so great that it nearly lays low the mind. I have trouble even writing of it without my vision turning black with rage. In the 2,056th Year of Harrin's Reign, Taran used his status as a part of my household, however minor, and his skills as a man of stealth to steal clippings of my hair and nails from within my own keep; when these were given to Maynard, they were the seed for a terrible curse. So it came to pass that Taran, in his capacity as scout, brought before me a "wanderer from Praethon"; in my own solar I held audience with Maynard, and from that meeting came all of this. He laid upon me a geas -one of Maynard's greatest strokes- which guided me in my actions above all to bring a war with the Kingdom of Atheria. So cunning were Maynard's dissemblings and warnings, and so well did he ensnare me in my own blindness and prejudice, that not once did I grasp that the true threat lay not across the Gine, but directly in front of me. Thrice we met, Maynard and I, and always was Taran present. With each, the shackles on my soul grew stronger. At the first meeting, I convinced myself that the time had come to check Atheria's ambitions, and to begin to build towers and fortifications on the islands in the Gine. At the second, I assured myself that it was necessary to pursue the Cult of Baalzebul's undead host from Rachdenburg deep into Praethon, no matter the provocation to Atheria. Across the river, of course, Rathick and Maynard could present my deeds to Nethinraust and say "Do they not move against you? Will you not need the power of these Great Old Magics to defeat them?". The Circle of Fathers will tell you that our deeds outlast us, rippling far beyond, and the life of Taran Kearney gives the proof for their parable. By enabling my corruption, he opened the way for the False Yewing War. So, throughout all the thousands of hours and thousands of miles he spent with Trallten's Hounds, Taran was betraying you, your kingdom, and your world; even if Taran did not know it, he was always a blade hidden in the palm of Maynard, ready to be deployed. I know that he came to you, before your journey to the North, and begged your forgiveness for his distemper in Gnathburg Forest. Do not think for a moment that he sought a way back from the darkness. Maynard wanted him to remain a part of your band, so that he had an agent even in Trallten's Hounds. As I had already been compromised, Maynard must have known somehow that I would place Taran with you after the battle. Once in Hrothdun Forest, it would seem that he met with Texerrizyl again and again during the Northern War and kept Maynard well apprised of your actions at every step. By the time of the third meeting, when I led a great army to the relief of the North, the geas had become the weight of a violent and intolerable oppression. Yet my mind and my spirit had been ensnared deep within the trap, and there was no escape. I gave the order for your party to halt, so that Zeelko could remove Idingast before he reached the Heartlands and the limits of Maynard's grasp. When you, yourself, returned to the South, the limits of Taran's usefulness as a spy had been reached and the time had come to strike. In the months after the Northern War I was finally made helpless, a prisoner in my own mind, able only to watch as the Black Betrayal was orchestrated. It was Taran who told my brother Niel to have your party wait at the Steadfast Stone on the Norton Road, and many are the good men who perished on that day. I once hoped to meet my brother again, in the life beyond this one, and beg for his forgiveness; but I know now that Maynard destroyed his soul, and to my eternal grief even that hope is denied me. It was there, of course, that Taran dealt his harshest blow to you, when he ran young Pallen Fletcher through with Gravefiller in order to openly affirm his loyalty to Maynard. I was touched by your memorial on the Green in Garrenwald, and the poem which is writ there, but after these moments of beauty I have a darker request as well. I ask you to bring me Taran's head on a pike, so that Trevelyan and Myrna Fletcher may look upon it as per their request, made all those years ago; and then I will mount it above the gates of Norton. But if this day was black for us, it was little lighter for Taran. For in severing his connection to his kingdom and his people, he lost his last link with the world of the light, and in the time since the darkness has consumed him entire. You witnessed his later meetings with Maynard, and in each of them he was left all the more hollow and alone. As you tell it, his own face registered the sheer scale of his madness when he gave Maynard the names of all the Nalthandian lords adjacent to the river, with the numbers of their hosts and the weaknesses of their citadels, so that this could be fed to the Atherians and pile high the carnage of the war. It was in exchange that Maynard enchanted Gravefiller with a dread curse of soul consumption. In many ways, it would seem that Taran served as a rich lode of knowledge for Maynard, that could be mined for lore of Nalthand and Ghien and Praethon. By the time Taran kidnapped me and brought me to the Harbingers' Grasp, however, he returned to Nalthand only as a mass murderer and hunter of men, to support the strikes of Maynard's other pawns or to orchestrate the next round of schemes. As evil begets evil, the damage done to Taran's soul from these days staggers the mind. When he sought artisans and laborers to be even more victims of geas ''to pry open the entrance to the sewers of Calthingden and to guide the assassins into the capital, how many did he lure away and murder before he found those that he needed? How many guards of the watch on the King's Road, how many innkeeps and tavern girls, had to follow them into the ground? In the town of Dremthist, he murdered seventeen men, sixteen still asleep. The celestials do not truck with counting the slain like counting coppers, but the modrons do: divination answered by a secundus noted that Taran has murdered 171 of his own countrymen. After all of this betrayal, has Taran gained anything? No, for his crimes were never truly committed for passion or greed or revenge. All he ever aimed to do was survive. But that has led him ever more deeply into insanity and evil; and as they have ever done, these have consumed him. He is wasted now, and empty, dreading his masters and horrified by the future. It is only at the end, then, that he has learned the truth: without goodness and meaning, survival is not an end. It is a nightmare. Statistics '''Taran Kearney: '''Male human Rog20; CR 20; Medium humanoid (human); HD 20d6+80; hp 152; Init +10; Spd 30 ft.; AC 44, touch 25, flat-footed 34; Base Atk +15; Grp +19; Atk +31 melee (1d6+9/15-20, ''Gravefiller) or +30 ranged (1d6+5/x3, shortbow); Full Atk +31/+26/+21 melee (1d6+9/15-20, Gravefiller) or +30/+25/+20 ranged (1d6+5/x3, shortbow); SA crippling strike, sneak attack +10d6; SQ improved evasion, improved uncanny dodge, opportunist, slippery mind, trapfinding, trap sense +6; Space/Reach 5 ft./5 ft.; AL NE; SV Fort +15, Ref +27, Will +13; Str 18, Dex 31, Con 18, Int 20, Wis 10, Cha 8. Skills and Feats: Balance +35, Climb +27, Disable Device +28, Escape Artist +33, Gather Information +1, Hide +33, Jump +6, Knowledge (local) +28, Listen +23, Move Silently +33, Open Lock +33, Search +28, Sleight of Hand +33, Spot +23, Tumble +33, Use Rope +33; Dodge, Improved Critical (rapier), Iron Will, Mobility, Shield Proficiency, Spring Attack, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (rapier). Possessions: Amulet of natural armor +5, ''100 arrows, ''belt of giant strength +6, bracers of armor +8, boots of speed, cloak of resistance +5, elixir of hiding ''(2), ''elixir of sneaking ''(2), ''gloves of dexterity +6, Gravefiller ''(+5 souldrinking mighty cleaving rapier''), headband of intellect +6, +5 light steel shield, ring of blinking, ring of protection +5, +5 shortbow, vest of escape. Category:Human Category:Nalthand Category:Neutral Evil Category:Rogue Category:Deceased Category:Character